PUMPKINS

PUMPKINS

I first grew pumpkins about thirty years ago on my allotment in Darlington. I thought it a good idea to encourage my young daughters in the ways of outdoor gardening by giving them the task of growing a huge pumpkin. This of course would be destined for a lantern at Halloween. I would never have dreamed that any part of it could be consumed.

At the end of October one massive pumpkin got harvested to the delight of a young lady who set about the task of creating the ugliest scary lantern she could carve for Halloween.

As parents we do our best and hope that our efforts in the garden, getting the kids to help with the strawberry picking, pea pod harvesting and cutting some nice flowers for mother will pay rewards in creating the next generation of garden lovers. No chance.

Pumpkin growing continues to be an annual event, but for entirely different reasons. You can forget the lantern. They are a health food product, and growing them is still a whole load of fun. The challenge is always to grow them as big as possible, and try to get at least two from each plant.

The more pumpkins you grow the more delicious soup, risottos and pumpkin pie you will enjoy.

Now that will give you far much more pleasure, than one useless but scary lantern.

However there is bound to be a few kids out there who might disagree with that thought.

Let’s start at the beginning.

If you want the biggest pumpkins you need the right varieties so choose Hundredweight or another type known to grow massive. Sow the seeds individually in small pots in mid April on a warm windowsill or greenhouse if it has some heat. Germination only takes a couple of weeks then the seedling wants to grow quite quickly. It will need potting up after a few weeks, then hardening off in May. However watch out for spring gales which can shred the soft large leaves. Strong young plants can be planted out in late May to early June.

Back on the allotment the ground allocated for pumpkins and courgettes will be left fallow for a few months in spring. Do not waste this opportunity. Sow an early green manure crop of clover as there is plenty time for it to mature and get dug in before you need the land for planting the pumpkins.

Pumpkins need rich soil that can hold moisture, so give a heavy dressing of manure or compost before the green manure is sown. Encourage the green manure to rot down after digging by giving a nitrogen fertiliser. This is also necessary to encourage ample growth once the pumpkins are planted.

While they are growing, keep them well watered during the summer and give regular feeding to encourage strong growth. As the pumpkins form place some straw underneath the fruit to keep them clean and off the soil. They should be coloured bright orange in October when they can be harvested. Store them in a cool frost free place and they should keep till next March.

When preparing the pumpkins for cooking you can save some seed for the following year’s crop, but it may not come true to type especially if you have courgettes or other squashes growing close by. Bees will cross pollinate them. I discovered this when I saved seed from a massive pumpkin.

The following year I grew loads of plants and passed them around allotment site friends who produced courgette shaped pumpkins of a range of colours. One plot holder thought this a bit of fun so saved the seed yet again and produced pure white oval pumpkins.

Pumpkins can be used for pies, risotto, soup and many other dishes. The flesh can be pureed and stored in the freezer for future use. My favourite has always been the soup, though the risotto comes close.

All parts of the pumpkin are edible, including the flowers, leaves and seeds. They are a very healthy food to eat as they are rich in vitamins A, B, C, E and K and contain the minerals iron, manganese, magnesium, calcium, phosphorus, potassium and zinc.

With this amount of goodness, by all means have your lantern, but use that flesh as a very healthy food product.

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HARVESTING SOME APPLES

HARVESTING SOME APPLES

It seems to be a good year for apple crops. A lot of top fruit suffered poor pollination last spring as the very mild winter brought flowering forward before the bees got their act together. However apples flowered a wee bit later and managed to get pollinated just fine. The hot, sunny and dry weather in June and July helped growth and swelling of the apples but the cool wet August gave them a fright. It was such a contrast that many of them got a bit confused, thought autumn was arriving so started to drop the apples before they were ripe. It was a daily task to collect these from the ground before the slugs and wasps found them and bring them indoors to ripen up.

Test the wind falls to check ripeness by cutting in half. If the seeds are black the apple is ripe but if still white or just turning colour it is not yet ripe, though you can still cook with them.

As usual Arbroath Pippin all got picked in August but suffered a lot of brown rot in the wet weather. It is a poor keeper so it was an apple a day till they were all gone.

Discovery was the next to get picked, and although the apples were massive the total crop was not huge. Maybe I was over zealous with the July thinning.

Red Devil was surprisingly very early to shed the crop this year. It normally hangs on the tree till well into October as it ripens quite late. My crop this year was all picked in September before they all fell off the tree. They are now in store and will continue to ripen and keep well for months.

Fiesta and Red Falstaff are still on the tree as we need more sunshine to ripen them up, but if bad weather or gales threaten they will need to get harvested otherwise they could suffer too much damage dropping to the ground.

Bramley cooking apples are also on the tree catching as much of the late sun and warmth as possible before picking. If the autumn is kind I will leave them on the tree till the beginning of November. They are not slow to let you know they want harvesting as they will start to drop off the tree so I keep a watch over them, though this year’s crop is just a fraction of last year’s crop. Might only have enough spare for two demijohns of wine whereas last year I got eight demijohns with the surplus apples.

Storage

Apples need sorting out before storing so they keep well. We wash all the dirt off, dry them, then sort them out, but keeping all varieties separate. Only store clean disease free and undamaged fruit otherwise they will rot in store and spread to healthy apples. However the damaged fruit can be used for cooking in numerous recipes including stir fries, sauces, compote, summer puddings and crumbles.

They are also fine to eat when ripe but just cut off the bad bits.

Small fruit, misshapen fruit and those with only slight damage are separated out for wine making as I just love my Sauterne styled apple dessert wine. These apples are also just fine for juicing or cider making. Juice can be bottled up and will keep for two to three days  in the fridge or even longer up to six months in the freezer.

Plant of the week

Impatiens commonly known as the Busy Lizzie

gets a second mention as my plant of the week as it has had a fantastic year and although we are now getting cooler nights it is still flowering its wee heart out. They have been outstanding in my hanging baskets and in a well drained border that only gets sun for a couple of hours each day. This ground is undisturbed as it is a drift of aconites. These flower in February, grow in March to April then die down for the summer. It is a perfect spot for a carefully planted batch of small Busy Lizzies to add colour in summer and early autumn before leaving the ground for the aconites.

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LOOKING AHEAD TO SPRING

LOOKING AHEAD TO SPRING

As summer flowers are just about finished we turn our attention to next year to plan what bulbs to buy for our spring displays, as well as the main annual bedding plants for beds, tubs and hanging baskets.

For sheer impact in large beds and borders it is hard to beat Golden Monarch wallflower underplanted with the large Darwin Hybrid tulip Apeldoorn. This combination is as old as the hills, but it will always be a great winner for sheer impact. However there are many other very successful partnerships with spring bedding plants and tulips. Polyanthus, primroses, myosotis (Forget me nots) and winter pansies will all give a great display on their own, but are best enhanced to full glory with an underplanting of tulips, hyacinths and crocus.

It is important to match tulip height with its bedding plant ground cover as well as its colour and flowering season. Wallflower is the tallest so needs a tall tulip like the Darwin Hybrids, the Fosteriana types or the slightly smaller early single tulips. For all the other bedding plants that only grow about a foot tall I use the early dwarf double tulips, (Peach Blossom)  or some of the species such as Red Riding Hood.

Tubs placed near entrance doorways can be planted up with some of the scented tulips such as the white Fosteriana Purissima or Apricot Emperor.

Hyacinths are also favourite for these locations as they are also very scented and the strong solid flower spikes are very impressive. The flowering season for tubs can be extended by adding snowdrops or crocus as well as tulips as they all grow at different depths and have different flowering periods so will grow happily together.

I also plant up my hanging baskets with pansies for a spring display, but don’t use bulbs as the baskets are too high to show the bulb flowers. I tend to keep my hanging baskets in my cold greenhouse to give them some winter protection and bring on the flowers a wee bit early. It also makes watering a lot easier.

However when planning my bulb purchases I organise the garden needs by season starting with the earliest flowers. Snowdrops and aconites will emerge in early February in a normal year, but since we never seem to get a normal year, (they flowered in January this year after a very mild winter) just expect them sometime in late winter. Both will rapidly spread into large drifts as they seed and naturalise happily.

These are followed by the Crocus species, (two best ones are Cream Beauty and Blue Pearl) then the hybrid crocus. These are all brilliant in tubs, beds, deciduous shrub borders and even under the apple tree orchards.

Daffodils and narcissus follow with any amount of different types available and many highly scented especially the Jonquills and the Cheerfulness varieties.

There are many types of dwarf bulbs very suited to the rock garden as well as underplanted amongst deciduous shrubs. Chionodoxa (Glory of the Snows) and grape hyacinths are very welcome harbingers of spring, but be careful with the grape hyacinth as it grows very easily from its own seeds and can be very invasive.

Bluebells can also be very attractive, but are hard to control as they will want to take over the whole garden.

The Cornish Lily, Nerine bowdenii is in flower now rather than in spring, but bulbs are available for planting in autumn. It forms dense drifts of pink flowers once established.

 

Plant of the week

 Jasminum polyanthum is most often grown as a houseplant, but can be grown outdoors in a sunny sheltered spot. It is fairly hardy but will not survive a really cold winter outdoors. It grows best on most soils, except clay as long as they are free draining. It has white scented flowers in summer. It is an evergreen climber that can reach several metres high.

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A QUIET DAY IN THE GARDEN

A QUIET DAY IN THE GARDEN

Summer has now given way to the beginning of autumn. Garden flowers are still hanging on but every cold night gives them a wee fright. On the allotment most summer crops have been gathered in but there are still plenty of autumn crops to harvest before we make a start to the winter selection.

Autumn Bliss raspberries are very prolific with fruits very large and no sign of any raspberry beetle maggots. Plenty of rasps to enjoy fresh as well as plenty for the freezer so we can have raspberry jam all year round.

Strawberries are still coming in from my row of Flamingo, a perpetual variety which will fruit till the frosts come in.

Figs are unbelievable this year. We have picked well over 70 fruits from one bush from early August till the end of September. This outdoor fig Brown Turkey enjoyed a very mild winter so most of the young fruits which I left on over winter (against normal advice) survived and produced plenty of mature fruits. Although they do not keep more than two days, we had no problem eating a few figs every other day for a couple of months.

Apple Discovery started to drop as the fruits ripened so they have all been picked and stored for eating for the next few weeks until Fiesta ripens, then Falstaff and Red Devil.

Apples get stewed, used in crumbles and added to my favourite fry up with bacon, eggs, mushroom and tomatoes. We use all the fruits one way or another after cutting off damaged and bruised bits, but just love a freshly picked Discovery as it is a very tasty early apple.

Autumn salad leaves including rocket, continue to add variety to our salad bowl. Pigeons were a problem on the young salad leaves but a net soon solved that problem.

Swiss chard and  kale are now in season for stir fries and soups and should keep cropping all winter.

Clubroot has reared its ugly head wiping out many cabbage and cauliflowers as well as a third of my wallflower transplants. The ground had all been limed, but August was cool and wet helping the disease to develop and spread. Some brassicas have resistance bred into them and were ok, but most others got affected.

Clover and tares green manures have all germinated and are now covering most of my spare ground. I will leave them till winter or flowering before I dig them in.

Greenhouse crops

Tomatoes are beginning to wind down as the cooler weather causes a lot of foliage to rot from botrytis. Remove all diseased leaves as soon as possible to stop it spreading. However I leave as much green leaves on as possible as these keep feeding younger growing tomatoes. There are still a lot of tomatoes wanting to ripen up, so these could last several more weeks. Once they have to come out I will re-use the space to plant up some winter lettuce and autumn salad leaves which will keep us supplied with fresh green salads for a few months.

Seedless grapes Flame and Perlette have been attacked by wasps, so they have all been picked to minimise the damage. So far they have not touched the Black Hamburg grapes as they are not quite ready yet.

Keep the greenhouse fully ventilated at most times to prevent any build up of diseases.

Amaryllis bulbs which got dried off in mid summer have now been cleaned up the largest bulbs repotted as they have had three years in the same pot. I packed six bulbs close together in one pot and used fresh compost, but kept half the bulbs above the surface as they do not like to be buried.

They should flower after about three months so hopefully they could be ready for Christmas.

Painting of the month

“Summer Colour” is an acrylic on a box canvas and will be on display together with over 60 paintings from my art class students in our autumn exhibition at Dundee Botanical Gardens from Saturday 4^th October to Sunday 12^th October 2014.

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